This is the Blog of Will Weider. This is the place where I share what I have learned through my mistakes and other crazy things in the life of a healthcare CIO.

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Windows Vista

I am writing this post from my primary home PC, which runs Windows Vista. As I switch between it and my work PC, which runs XP, I would be hard pressed to tell you the difference. The only things that come to mind are:

Vista’s radically different Search user interface and

User Access Control.

I find both annoying. But, I am a geek and when I am home I enjoy trying out the latest and greatest. I also have a MacBook running OS X Leopard and my old home built PC runs Ubuntu Linux (I had time to build PCs?).

Other than some minor annoyances I like Vista and I would not consider switching back to XP. I would also add that there are annoyances with all of these Operating Systems. I find Apple’s Vista claims disengenuous. I found just as many OS X Leopard annoyances and incompatibilities. For example, my SuperDuper backup would not work and I could no longer import my Flip video into the new version of iMovie.

But, when I am working I am a business person. Every day I am faced with a limitless number of opportunities to make Ministry and Affinity a better place for our patients, doctors and employees. Upgrading the operating system on our 14,000 PCs is not on that list of opportunities. That is why we are taking a pass on Vista. Not that anything is wrong with Vista. It works great for me. But I would rather spend our team’s time working on electronic health records, patient safety initiatives and reducing the cost of healthcare to our Wisconsin communities.

Testing Vista alone would take thousands of hours. Getting our users acclamated to the OS would be another huge investment in time. When you are multiplying everything by 14,000 it adds up quickly.

USA Today has an article on Vista and I am quoted liberally (more than John Halamka – woohoo). I thought Jeff Graham did I nice job with the article. But, I love having a blog because it gives me a chance to expand on the quotes in the article.

On a personal note, the USA Today photographer came out to our Weston facility and took about 200 pictures of me and about 5 of some of our employees doing their day-to-day work. Despite having the dds in my favor, It appears from the online version to go with one of the pictures without me. Actually, that is the way it should be. These are the people providing the service to our patients. IT is a support department and we should be in the background. Update: I just got the print version. I see there is a photo of me too. The caption made me cringe a little. How do I look?